We arrived right at bell time. We had free tickets thanks to El Generico again.
I'm not going to remember every match as I'm writing this several days later. I haven't seen much of Union so I didn't know several of the guys. There is a crossover of DDT guys who work these shows.
The 3rd match (photo 4) had Io Shirai in an inter gender match. They both had reindeer hats on. The match started and in seconds took the hat had Shirai on and he won I guess as the bell rang. Shirai then wanted a regular match. They had a pretty good match and Shirai won in the end.
The 4th match was the one I was most anxious to see (photo 6). It was a very mixed tag. One team featured female wrestler Cherry teaming with Gabaiji-chan who has an old man mask & walking cane. The other team featured a favorite of mine from Okinawa Pro Mensore Oyaji (plays a middle aged character, I can't say old with Gabaiji-chan on the other side) & Mr 6 (child wrestler). Photo 2 is a photo of me with Mensore Oyaji.
The match was a blast. Gabaiji-chan is very fragile. During the intros, streamers got thrown at him and he got knocked down (Photo 5). Gabaiji-chan was very slow and using the cane to help him walk and wrestle. Later in the match, they took his cane away and all of a sudden he became super fast running the ropes. He then pulled off a running springboard dive to the floor. After Mr 6 & Mensore won Mensore tried to give a beer to Mr 6.
I'm skipping around to the main which was Shuji Ishikawa & Ken Ohka vs Isami Kodaka & El Generico (photo 7). It was almost like an old school American type tag. Generico's team were the undersized underdog team fighting to survive. They had a damn good match which went to a 30 minute draw.
After the crew came out to give speeches since it was a year end show. Mr 6 it sounded like he said he's going to America next year which I would think would be for Chikara Pro. There was a guy who was doing an American gimmick getting the crowd to chant USA. El Generico in Spanglish thanked Union Pro for bringing him over & made it sound like he's going to be gone for a while. I had read just that morning about him being injured.
I met Mr 6 and got the pin & sticker shown in photo 8. I got the photo with Mensore that I mentioned. I got to talk to Generico for a few minutes as best as I could with my Spanish and get a photo (photo 1). He is in pretty rough shape it looked like. Let's hope for a speedy recovery!
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